Let Affiliates Bid on your Trademark - 6 Reasons

[Linda Buquet]

There are strong pro and *** arguments about both sides of the affiliate trademark bidding issue. Much has been written and discussed about all the reasons why merchants and AM's should protect their brand and NOT allow tradmark bidding. Some affiliate programs in my opinion go WAY too far and even restrict bidding on common keywords.

Smart move! Tie your affiliate's hands then call them marketing partners. :-(

I just discovered Craig Alinder's blog in my reader and he has a great article from the affiliate side of the argument and makes some very good points about why affiliate programs SHOULD let affiliates bid on their brand and dominate the paid search results.

Craig's 6 Reasons all merchants should outsource PPC efforts to the affiliate community.

1. You would have less risk in the PPC arena.
2. You (through their affiliates) would dominate the search results page for their own trademarked terms.
3. You would be preventing their competition from bidding on their trademarks, because the affiliates would compete for the top positions.
4. You would only have to pay commissions on actual sales, not potential sales.
5. You would not have to risk spending their whole advertising budget in a few hours because of inexperience.
6. If you have chosen to hire a SEM company, then you would not have to pay enormous fees to a company that is doing something the affiliate community would be happy to do based on their own proven performance. SEM companies are not paid based on a percentage of sales. They are paid whether they increase your sales or not.

Read the rest of Craig's post to get more in-depth about the trademark bidding issue from a super affiliate's viewpoint. Trademark Bidding Rules - Open Letter to Affiliate Program Managers.

[quantumtiger]

I agree Linda,

Google fills advertising positions on as many keywords as they can (that is the service they provide) trademarked or not.

So a merchant has a choice:

Fill up these positions with your affiliates, give them a break, let them and help them make some money.

This way they "Own" the keyword.

Or let their competiton get listed on their trademarked keyword, which is kinda like drilling holes in the bottem of your own boat.

Each competitor that lists on their keyword is taking traffic from them and another hole that is sinking them and their affiliates, faster.

I know what I will be doing when it comes time for me to worry about it.

[JamieConverseon]

I'm right there with you Linda. A term that we have used is Shelf Space, we explain it to our clients via a grocery store shelf analogy and it seems to work well. What I would say, to take this further, for merchants who are reluctant to do this due to the sometimes wild west nature of PPC, is to build relationships with some PPC guys and use the ones you trust to work the PPC landscape with you.

[Linda Buquet]

The shelf space analogy is a great one Jamie!
Amazing how brick and mortar analogies help merchants understand things better.

[JamieConverseon]

Yeah, it's sort of "a picture paints a thousand words" sort of thing. I've seen the light bulb turn on right before my eyes when they look at it that way. After saying that, I do have to say that I have worked on programs where that didn't make sense, but it more often than not does work.